We arrived early in the morning after driving a few hours down from Fox Glacier. We hadnt boked anywhere to stay yet so we pulled up at the lakes edge and had a coffee while we looked around for somewhere to stay for a few days.

Once we had settled in we went for a walk to get our bearings. Queenstown is pretty small and you can find your way around easily. I gave Tuan a call and we organised to meet up in the evening.

We had heard that the nightlife was good so we looked forward to it. We had a crazy night out but it was a shock to be in the cold after spending so much time in the heat of Oz!

I had said to Tuan during the drunken evening that i wanted to do the canyon swing the next day not really thinking about hte hangover i was going to have but nice and early the next day he called me up and woke me up telling me i had to come and do it....

I dragged myself out of bed and go ready and met him in town where we went to the 2 companies who did the canyon swing, Shotover and Nevis arc. I had checked out both and Nevis seemed to be better from a video so we started there but after to chatting to one of the employees at the Nevis Arc shop she told us that personally she thought shotover canyon swing was better as it was a more sheer drop of the edge and scaresd you a lot more. We couldnt really ignore the advise considering she worked for the competition and still told us yto go to the other place.

We checked in and paid for the Shotover canyone swing and got taken in a mini bus up to the canyon where we walked down to the hut and got kitted up....She wasnt lying when she said sheer drop, it was a platfor straight of the lip of the canyon. There were a number of options you could pick of how you wanted to jump of the edge so i planned to attempt a backflip :)

It came to my go and they set me up ready to go, pretened to push me ofg the edge, funny b*****s yeah! anyway, after your strapped in to everything you dont really have much space to get a run up so i had to try and do this backflip with a one step run up without bashing my head on the platform....well, i failed miserably, i didnt hit my head but my attempt at a backflip was just a fail, i pretty much ended up just stpping of the edge haha, ahh well it was still bloody good fun and a good rush.

I decided to check my funds when i got back to the hostel and realised i was in a bit of trouble money wise uh oh :(

I had been budgeting a bit wrong and id eneded up spending way over what i should have. I had to make a decision now on what i wanted to do. I had planned to go to to South America but that was never going to be able to happen now. I had two choices, fly back to the UK after NZ or go back to Aus and meet Kelly and see if i could get a job. I already had my flight back to the UK paid for so if it all went wrong i could always fly back from Aus so i decided to go for it and fly back to Aus and get a job.

I decided to skip the rest of NZ as i thught it better to save the money for the first few weeks in Aus to help get settled. I booked my flight back to Aus and left the next day... I know i know, cutting NZ short is mad but i could always fly back to NZ if things went well and finish off what i had missed.

So it was all a bit sudden but it felt good jumping into the unknown, i said my byes to everyone and got a coach to christchurch and then a flight back to Aus.